Ukraine and supply of Russian gas to Europe – part five. 

How the European Commission came to assume power over Europe’s foreign policy

Eamon Dyas

On 17 June 2025, The Guardian reported that the European Commission had unveiled plans to ban all gas imports from Russia by January 2028. The plans represent an unprecedented expansion of the Commission’s powers insofar as it places a “forever” ban on such exports which will continue even if there is peace in Ukraine.

“Under the proposals, European companies would be banned from importing Russian gas or providing services at EU liquified natural gas terminals to Russian customers. Any contracts entered into from today would have to be wound up by 1 January 2026, but companies with pre-existing agreements have a final deadline of 1 January 2028. (“Europe will never return to Russian gas, European Commission insists, The Guardian, 17 June 2025).

Although this proposal is obviously related to the EU sanctions policy against Russia the Commission has wilfully redefined it as a ‘trade’ issue in order to get around the fact that, unlike sanctions proposal which require EU unanimity, a ‘trade’ issue only requires a qualified majority to pass. In this way the Commission has removed the sovereign rights of Hungary, Slovakia and Austria within the EU by flagrant duplicitous means while knowing that those countries will be most impacted by this prohibition. However, the Commission’s prohibition takes it even further away from the claim that the EU is based on a rules-based order by providing companies with a fabricated legal loophole that protects those who choose to break existing commercial contracts with Russian suppliers with the tool to escape any subsequent litigation for breach of contract.

“The Commission expressed confidence that European companies terminating long-term gas contracts would not be liable for damages. Jørgensen [the EU Energy Commissioner – ED] said the EU ban was beyond any individual company’s control. ‘It is not them who are breaking the contract, it is indeed force majeure.” (Ibid).

This represents another development of the growing influence of the European Commission over its Member States and their relationship with the outside world. In order to fully appreciate what this means it’s important to understand how this outcome was achieved and how it is related to the expansion of the Commission’s reach into the area of foreign affairs.

In the beginning there was state-owned assets

Direct control by EU governments over their national energy sectors began to dissolve in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The first was the UK which privatised its electricity sector in 1990. This was followed by Spain in 1998, then Italy in 1999 and France in 2000 (though the French privatisation was in effect only a partial privatisation). But even after they privatised their energy sectors many of the governments of these countries, to a greater or lesser extent, continued to exert indirect control over their energy sectors through policies that were based on a sensitivity to their importance in terms of national security. In fact, if we exclude defence, we can see that energy was the last area where the national instincts of the main EU countries was more in tune with protectionism than globalisation. It was this aspect of the continuing relationship of the major EU countries to their energy sectors that had become a target of the EU Commission by 2005.

In 2005-2006 several disputes blew up in France, Germany, Italy and Spain where the governments adopted policies that had at their basis the desire to prevent takeovers or mergers of their energy companies by or with foreign companies. These events became a cause of concern not only among the European federalists in Brussels but among EU ideologues generally. In the context of these disputes, the Italian Finance Minister, Giulio Tremonti, stated in February 2006:

“It is time again to stop the countries of the European Union from erecting national barriers. If not, we will risk an August 1914 effect . . . with at the end, a war that no one wanted.” (Energy and Climate Change: Europe at the Crossroads, by David Buchan. Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Published by Oxford University Press, 2009, quoted on p.38).

The author of the above book devoted a whole chapter entitled “Governments behaving badly” dealing with the way national governments in the EU had been seeking to ensure that their newly privatised energy companies did not stray into foreign ownership. In response to Tremonti’s comment the author says:

“But there was an economic relevance to his comments. For August 1914 brought an end to the world’s first period of globalisation without tariff barriers and currency controls, and what Mr. Tremonti was really warning of was the risk of globalisation going into reverse again. Nor was it implausible that the reverse might come in energy . . .” (Ibid).

It was this fear that the energy sector could prove to be the area where the march of EU integration and globalisation would be stopped and even put into reverse that occupied the attention of the European Commission for the next decade or so.

The means by which the Commission was to deal with this issue was provided by Tony Blair’s speech at a meeting of the EU heads of state at Hampton Court on 27 October 2005. The tenure of that speech revealed that Britain was not only prepared to discard its traditional opposition to the EU developing an EU-wide energy policy but would encourage it. He explained that it was now necessary for Britain to discard its traditional opposition to a European energy policy as a means of encouraging other EU member states to cede their existing national energy policy-making powers under a common European energy policy. It was only by such measures, according to Blair, that Europe could in future compete in the globalised world markets. That this new policy on the part of Britain happened to emerge in the aftermath of the Thatcherite destruction of the British coal industry and coincided with the decline in North Sea oil production was not lost on those who understood the nature of Britain’s relationship with the EU. However, it was lost on those, who unfortunately, held high positions in the European Commission and who viewed this development as the opportunity to further their federalist ambitions for the union.

Blair’s Hampden Court speech took place during Britain’s dual presidencies of the European Council and the G8 in 2005. That year Blair had said that he wanted Britain’s presidency to concentrate on the twin issues of energy and climate change. And similar to his support for a European energy policy he also stressed the need for the EU to develop a common policy on climate change. However, he stressed that such a policy should not rely on the imposition of targets. This was at odds with the European Commission’s energy policy at the time and which was already meeting some opposition from within the EU. That policy had been predicated on the Kyoto Protocols of 1997 which the EU had helped to frame. Those protocols involved a commitment on the part of the EU and 37 industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 5% from the 1990 levels. The Protocols were due to come into force in 2005 with a period of operation of 2008-2012. Blair’s position emphasised the fact that the imposition of targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases was impractical and member states would not endanger their economies in order to meet such target-driven policies. He also believed that the withdrawal of the US from the Kyoto agreement made the pursuit of such targets more difficult.

Instead, Blair advocated an EU policy which was based on the provision of more support and encouragement for the development of green technology which he saw as a solution of the climate issue and an opportunity to reinvigorate the European economy.

A European policy on climate change

The European Commission had been attempting to develop a unified policy on climate change even before the Kyoto negotiations. In fact such attempts went back to the Maastricht treaty of 1992 and continued with the EU’s agreement to implement the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. This was followed by the initiation of the ill-fated carbon trading scheme which was introduced in 2005 as a mechanism designed to enable the EU to meet the carbon-reduction targets it had agreed to at Kyoto. However, as Blair had correctly observed, all of these were thwarted by the powers which national governments continued to exercise over the implementation of the Commission’s directives on climate change and those were intrinsically connected to their national energy policies.

The president of the European Commission at the time of Blair’s Hampden Court Speech was Jose Manuel Barroso. Like Blair he had seen the new UK policy on a common European energy policy as an opportunity for the Commission to “add value to the European project”. That value was provided by the clear route that the absence of British objections now opened up for the Commission to begin in earnest the process of developing strategies that could over-rule national objections to a common European energy policy. The result was the Commission’s Third Energy Package which was proposed in September 2007 and adopted by the European Parliament and Council in July 2009. That package laid down directives aimed at creating a more competitive and integrated internal EU market for electricity and gas and was meant to ensure free access to what had previously been national energy networks by eliminating border constraints. It also established the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) which was designed to oversee the offices of the energy regulators of the EU nation-states in order to ensure that those national energy regulators were not sustaining barriers to the emergence of a free market in energy.

Despite the fact that Blair opposed the EU’s core policy on climate change as epitomised in its carbon-reduction targets, Barroso had also seen Britain’s policy of pushing climate change to the top of the global agenda in 2005 as an opportunity. For Barroso it offered the European Commission the chance to revisit the issue in a way which could be more successful both as a tool for generating more cohesion within the EU but also as a means by which the EU could assume greater influence on the wider global stage.

“He [President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso – ED] had heard Tony Blair talk very well about climate change at the Hampton Court summit in autumn 2005, and heard this echoed by French and German leaders. As a former prime minister, Barroso sees himself very much as one of the boys at European summits, and found climate change went down well there and that was something he could discuss on equal terms with leaders outside Europe.” (Buchan quoting a Brussels official, p.114).

Within this gossipy observation is the kernel of what became the means by which the officials of the European Commission began to see its policy on climate change as something that could be used as a means of breaking down the national objections to a common energy policy and the projection of “soft” EU power globally. This proved to be a justified expectation on both counts. Within three years the issue of climate change had begun to reveal the extent to which it had become a successful contributing factor in creating a more homogenous European Union.

By the summer of 2008, the Director of the Institute for European Studies and member of the Compliance Committee of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations, was observing:

“Climate change has become an important driver of European integration in general. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, environmental protection was pushed into the background by the Lisbon agenda of 2000 which placed particular emphasis on improving the competitiveness of the European economy. After the failure of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe in 2005 [France and Holland voted it down in referendums – ED], the European institutions were looking for opportunities to reinforce their legitimacy and reinvigorate the European integration process. Environmental protection had constantly received high support in Eurobarometer polls for more than two decades. In addition, the urgency and importance of the issue of climate change was increasing with the finalisation of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and public opinion polls showed particularly high support for European-level action in this field. As a result, a window of opportunity opened for advancing both internal and external EU climate policy. The European institutions grasped this opportunity to enhance their legitimacy by moving climate change into the centre of the European integration process.” (EU Leadership in International Climate Policy: Achievements and Challenges, by Sebastian Oberthür and Claire Roche Kelly. The International Spectator, vol. 23, published online, 20 August 2008).

And a year later, in 2009, in the context of the issue of climate change, the author of “Energy and Climate Change: Europe at the Crossroads” could state on the very first page that:

“No other issue in the EU’s 50-year history – not currency, not defence, not foreign policy, not agriculture – have member states become so unanimous on the need for EU-level action.” (Buchan, p.1)

And, “In the EU, climate change has developed an integrationist dynamic that has only been paralleled by the ‘1992 single market’ programme.” (p.2) and further that “Climate change is giving a new rationale and coherence to energy policy at the EU level” (p.11).

But beyond its capacity to further the cause of European integration there was another aspect of climate change which had not been lost on Barroso and members of the European Commission. That was the way in which it became an issue which that enabled the EU to project its influence beyond Europe and onto the global stage.

Climate change and the evolution of European diplomatic structures

“While the EU is well known as a trade actor the complexities of its role as an environmental actor, operating under shared competence between the member states and the Community, are less well understood. Despite the inherent difficulties it has been surprisingly effective, although in areas such as climate change there is a need for strong presidential leadership. The EU’s most evident field of activity has concerned the many multilateral environmental agreements in which it has come to play a leading role. However, this does not exhaust its contribution to global environmental governance that extends to the dissemination of norms and the incorporation of partners in its accession and neighbourhood policies.” – (The European Contribution to Global Environmental Governance, by John Vogler. Published in International Affairs, July 2005).

Britain’s presidency of the European Council in July-December 2005 had acted as a catalyst that enabled the European Commission to go beyond its role “as a trade actor” and to further its efforts to generate a common European energy policy. At the same time, the way that Britain had endorsed the issue of climate change on the world stage had helped the EU to forge a greater cohesion among the member states. But these issues also presented an opportunity for those who also sought a greater role for the EU in the wider world.

Sebastian Oberthür, the member of the Compliance Committee of the Kyoto Protocol at the United Nations mentioned earlier, saw the withdrawal of the Bush administration from the Kyoto process in March 2001 as a fortuitous event for the EU. By the US leaving, the way was clear for the EU to assume the leadership in an area which was increasingly occupying the attention of global leaders. However, the EU was still ill-equipped to perform such a role. Oberthür suggested that:

“The EU’s international performance can be further improved by leveraging its diplomatic potential. Since other resources available to the EU are limited, the Union has to focus its efforts on developing its soft power capabilities.

Diplomacy constitutes a prime tool of soft power and of foreign policy in general, and the EU possesses a particular diplomatic potential because of the diverse international contacts of its various member states. However, this potential has to be exploited more fully. Diplomacy has remained the prerogative of the foreign ministries of individual member states. Apart from the establishment of loose ‘green diplomacy network’, coordination of the EU’s diplomatic efforts has remained piecemeal. The EU diplomatic service (External Action Service) to be set up pursuant of the Lisbon Treaty of 2007 may help improve the situation.” (Oberthür and Kelly, op. cit.).

He saw the above possibility as a natural evolution of what had already emerged through developments that began in the 1990s. An acceptance among EU members that climate change was to be defined as an area of “mixed competence” between the European Community and the individual member states had predated the Maastricht Treaty of 1993. This in turn implied an acceptance that the European Community and later the European Union would be represented (in the form of the European Commission) at international climate negotiations alongside the representatives of the individual member states. It was to ensure that the participating Commission and member states at such negotiations acted jointly and in close coordination that a council was established in Brussels in the 1990s. In terms of its function the council:

“Prepares for international negotiations and agrees on negotiating positions which are then usually reflected in Council conclusions. On that basis, the member states and the European Commission coordinate their strategy at international negotiations. The current EU Presidency represents the EU flanked by the European Commission and the incoming Presidency (together forming the so-called “EU Troika”. (Oberthür and Kelly).

This arrangement was to go on to form the foundation of a bureaucratic structure that began to mirror the diplomatic mechanisms of the member states. The structure continued to evolve in the early years of the twenty-first century with the organisational reforms undertaken during the Irish presidency of the European Council in the first half of 2004 representing a further development.

“In response to the expanding negotiating agenda in international climate policy, the EU has gradually diversified the system of expert groups supporting the Council working group and has delegated more authority to them to develop negotiating positions. Furthermore, to enhance the efficient use of expertise existing within the EU and to provide for greater continuity and coherence in negotiations, a system of “lead negotiators’ and “issue leaders’ was introduced during the Irish EU Presidency in the first half of 2004. Thereby, lead negotiators from various member states other than the current EU Presidency and from the Commission are assigned to represent the EU in various international negotiating groups over longer periods of time (on behalf of the EU Presidency). These negotiators also take a lead in developing the EU position in cooperation with selected “issue leaders”.” (Oberthür and Kelly).

In other words, the EU had evolved a bureaucracy which included lead negotiators who were tasked to serve the President of the Commission’s interpretation of EU policy in international negotiations.

The bureaucracy was put to increasing use as the Commission subsequently assumed, and was delegated, increasing powers in negotiations with third party actors. It played a central role in an Energy Memorandum with Egypt in 2008, and even more significantly was pivotal in the negotiations between Ukraine, the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, that led to the EU-Ukraine agreement reached in July 2009. The political component of this agreement was not lost in the statement made by Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, after the latter deal was agreed:

“I’m extremely pleased that political agreement has been reached with Ukraine on reform of its gas sector which opens the way for a financial assistance package to be provided by the International Finance Institutions to Ukraine.”

(See: Press Release of the European Commission, 31 July 2009, “Commission and International Financial Institutions reach agreement with Ukraine on reform of the Ukrainian gas sector”).

And further, on 12 September 2011, the European Foreign Affairs Council gave the Commission a negotiating mandate for the negotiations with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline project which took place in 2011-12.

“The Commission also gained the authority to act as the bloc’s representative in the negotiations pertaining to the Trans-Caspian Pipeline, a key element in the European Commission’s efforts to make the ‘Southern Gas Corridor’ a reality. In this context, the Commission has also become instrumental in fostering membership in the Energy Community, and has engaged in bilateral negotiations with potential members such as Georgia [in 2014 – ED]. With this it became an actor in EU external energy affairs that go beyond market regulation.” (“Geopolitics and the Foreign Policy Dimensions of EU Energy Security”, by Tim Boersma and Andreas Goldthau. Published in Energy Union: Europe’s New Liberal Mercantilism?, edited by Svein S. Andersen, Andreas Goldthau and Nick Sitter. Published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017, p.105.).

The Commission was central to another Energy Memorandum with Algeria in 2013. The majority of these actions on the part of the Commission were undertaken:

“with a view of diversifying supply . . . and so fostering energy relations with countries viewed as ‘alternatives’ to particularly Russian supplies, even though the European Commission does not actually sign agreements.” (Ibid.).

Although the issue of climate change provided the entry through which the European Commission became involved in international negotiations relating to the issue, the other issue which played its part in the way in which the Commission extended its influence was energy security and energy security increasingly meant Russia.

Climate gives way to security

Initially, the issues of climate and security were viewed as two interlocking components where the solutions to one served as a solution to the other. For instance, the need to reduce carbon emissions and develop green renewable energy substitutes were also part and parcel of the perceived need to reduce Europe’s energy reliance on Russian energy. In that sense anything which succeeded in doing this was supported by those who championed the green agenda. However, it didn’t necessarily work the other way round. Efforts to find alternative sources of energy other than that supplied by Russia were not restricted to seeking solutions solely in terms of green energy as it was generally accepted that green energy could not replace Russian oil and gas within any foreseeable timeframe. Reducing Europe’s energy dependence on Russia inevitably involved seeking out alternative suppliers which meant that Europe was exchanging like for like with no favourable impact when it came to climate change.

For that reason, the Commission’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through its carbon trading scheme proved so difficult to implement in situations where Poland for instance relied on coal for 95% of its electricity needs and many central and eastern countries whose supply infrastructures and grids continued to rely on imports of Russian oil and gas as a legacy from the Soviet era. Though eager to move away from that reliance for political reasons, these countries were never capable of doing that in a way that easily synchronised with the climate change objectives of the western European states. Those same countries which found difficulties with the carbon trading scheme were as a consequence the most enthusiastic supporters of the Commission’s efforts to find alternative sources of oil and gas.

With the issue of climate change proving to be a divisive issue in this way what emerged was the gradual supplanting of climate concerns by security concerns as the main driving force of the Commission’s desire for integration. This did not mean the abandonment of climate change as it remained a means by which the Commission was forging relationships with the wider world. What it meant was a growing emphasis on security of supply when it came to energy within the expanded European Union. But this in itself also harmonised with the Commission’s desire to represent the EU in its expanded interaction with the world beyond the European Union. We see this in operation in the Commission’s involvement in the negotiations with Egypt, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Algeria mentioned earlier, all of which related to attempts to find alternative sources of energy as a means of reducing dependence on Russia.

In the meantime, as part of its efforts to impose control over the internal energy market in the EU:

“The Commission in 2012 acquired the authority to examine existing intergovernmental energy agreements between EU member states and third parties. The policy narrative behind this move pertains to market transparency and the idea of information on deals with third parties will improve market functioning.” (Ibid.).

In reality however, this proved to be another means by which the Commission could influence the agreements between Member States and “third parties” in the area of energy supply and of course the “third parties” invariably meant Russia. By 2014, the growing anti-Russian sentiment within the EU had already shaped the mechanism by which it related to the outside world.

“There was no lack of irritants in EU-Russian relations that might predicate a mercantilist or even geopolitical turn in EU policy towards Russia. As mentioned, the 2006 and especially, the 2009 gas crisis provided important impulses for EU policy making, even if it took a while to pick up speed.

Russia’s confiscation of the Yukos oil company and arrest of its owners, backsliding on human rights and gay bashing also helped alienate important constituencies in the EU, and the annexation of Crimea and war in eastern Ukraine caused many Europeans, for the first time since the Cold War, to see Russia as representing a real military and territorial threat.” (The Hunter becomes the Hunted: Gazprom Encounters EU Regulation, by Indra Overland, Published in Energy Union: Europe’s New Liberal Mercantilism?, edited by Svein S. Andersen, Andreas Goldthau and Nick Sitter. Published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017, pp.119-120).

The allocation of blame on Russia for the 2006 and 2009 gas crisis was itself a manifestation of prevailing anti-Russian sentiment as in both instances the cause of the crisis was Ukraine (see my earlier article on this in previous issue of Labour Affairs). However, unlike 2006 and 2009, by 2014 the Commission had expanded its powers significantly and the events of that year were to ensure that those powers were further expanded and in turn began to be more openly used against Russia.

The significance of the 2014 European Parliamentary elections

The elections to the European Parliament took place between 22 and 25 May, 2014. Russia’s annexation of Crimea took place two months earlier. In many countries anti- EU feelings were running high in the period leading up to the 2014 elections. Such was the atmosphere that the sitting President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, felt compelled to warn about what he referred to as a situation where “We are seeing, in fact, a rise of extremism from the extreme right and from the extreme left” based on “a festival of unfounded reproaches against Europe” (EU Elections May Be ‘Tense’ as Extremism Grows, Barroso Warns, by Jonathan Stearns, Bloomberg, 15 January 2014).

It was in that atmosphere that the main political blocs within the European Parliament backed a new arrangement whereby the next President of the European Commission should be the candidate chosen by the party which won the most seats. This arrangement was known as the Spitzenkandidaten (lead candidates in German) agreement. In practice it meant that the two main candidates would be either Jean -Claude Juncker, the European People’s Party bloc (EPP) or Martin Schulz, the Party of European Socialists bloc (S&D).

One of the main issues which Juncker campaigned on in the lead-in to the election was a commitment to create a European Energy Union. His idea for an Energy Union remained quite vague but insofar as it involved reforming and reorganising Europe’s energy policy, pooling resources, combining energy infrastructures and uniting the EU’s negotiating power vis-a-vis third countries it echoed much of what had gone before. However, it was what he advocated as his three foreign policy objectives that with hindsight were more significant. His main objective in this regard was “To make the High Representative act like a true European Minister of Foreign Affairs.” This was followed by the creation of a “Permanent structured cooperation in defence matters.” With the final one being “A pause in enlargement”.

The turn out for the 2014 European Parliament election was a record low 42.54% and although it lost ground to the socialists the EPP emerged as the bloc with the most seats and so its candidate, Jean-Claude Juncker, became the President of the European Commission. Shortly after he took up his post in November 2014 he set to work on his Energy Union project.

“In December 2014, the European Commission set out its work programme for the coming year. . . The programme set out 23 new initiatives (as well as scrapping 80 others), including a Strategic Framework for the Energy Union, which would focus on ‘energy security; integration of national energy markets reduction in European energy demand; decarbonising the energy mix and promoting research and innovation in the energy field. It will include the revision of the EU Emission Trading System as part of the legislative framework post-2020.’” (Something for Everyone: Political Fragmentation and Policy Accommodation in the European Parliament, by Michiel van Hulton and Nick Sitter. Published in Energy Union: Europe’s New Liberal Mercantilism?, edited by Svein S. Andersen, Andreas Goldthau and Nick Sitter. Published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017, p.228)

Juncker also initiated a significant effort to strengthen the President’s grip on the Commission’s machinery and quickly initiated moves to invest the positions of Vice- Presidents with responsibility for overseeing thematically organised portfolios.

“Henceforth, the Commission would operate on the basis of political priorities determined centrally by the President and his team, and enforced by the Commission’s new First Vice-President, former Dutch foreign minister, Frans Timmermans.” (ibid. p.228).

Juncker also ensured that the new Commission would have access to an unprecedented amount of funding.

“Moreover, the various financial vehicles feeding into the implementation of the Energy Union, including the Juncker Plan and the Connecting Europe Facility, can be viewed as a means to firmly establish a permanent and better stocked budget for the European Commission – through the backdoor of energy policy.” (Franza and Van Der Linde, in Energy Union, p.108).

[Note: The Connecting Europe Facility was a financing facility established in 2014 to assist in the development of trans-European infrastructure in the fields of energy, transport and digital].

All in all, the emergence of the Juncker presidency after the 2014 European Parliamentary elections can be seen to represent a significant landmark in the evolution of an increasingly assertive and independent European Commission. The direction this took represented a shift from an emphasis on climate change to energy security.

“But clearly, a more security focused element can be identified in the EU’s actions in external energy affairs. This point is driven home by the 2014 Energy Security Strategy. Explicit reference is made to the gas crisis of 2006 and 2009, Russia’s dominant role in the EU energy mix, and the imperative to diversify routes, and tangible steps in the shape of enhancing LNG imports, enhancing resilience against supply shocks by way of developing storage capacity and infrastructure, and improving coordination of national energy policies with a view of advancing Europe’s almost proverbial ‘single voice in energy’. The policy context of the Strategy clearly consisted in Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in March, Moscow’s support for separatists in the Eastern Ukraine, and rising tensions over gas transit through the country.” (Boersma and Goldthou in Energy Union, pp.105-106).

In February 2015 Juncker’s Energy Union framework strategy further emphasised a fixation on Russia as the main threat to Europe’s energy security and this required a move away from the EU’s previous emphasis on its climate policy.

“To be sure, the framework strategy also goes into detail on climate policy and environmental issues. But clearly, the Energy Union proposals represent a shift in the Commission’s agenda to the effect that for the first time, a strategic document outlining the EU’s comprehensive energy policy prioritises security.” (Ibid.).

The implications of all of this was that the Commission had moved significantly beyond its role of regulatory manager of the internal EU market to one where it was increasingly involved in the world of geopolitics.

“various other elements of the EU’s external energy policy go beyond the confines of the regulatory state approach to external energy policy. This includes strategic partnerships with supplier states, the gas security directive, and now the Energy Union proposals. Here, the EU no longer exerts internal impact through the spillover effects stemming from the internal market and its regulation. Instead, the EU enters the security policy sphere, and with it the territory of geopolitics. This has been a gradual rather than a linear process. In this process the Energy Union proposals represent one important element that adds a strong security flavour to what still remains a patchwork of EU level policies rather than a coherent approach. And yet, that patchwork has started to tilt towards a security bias which adds the notion of a more ‘muscular’ external energy policy.” (Ibid. p.108).

What the author means when he refers to the EU is of course the European Commission. The European Commission was in 2015 more than a mere regulatory agency that exercised its regulatory powers over the commercial concerns operating within its jurisdiction. It was now in the business of using those powers as a means of exerting influence over the way in which commercial concerns operated beyond that jurisdiction. And by 2014 those powers were harmonised with the way in which the EU was increasingly viewing Russia as a threat to its security.

Stopping Russia requires stopping Gazprom

Previous to Juncker’s arrival the Commission’s interpretation of Europe’s energy security had changed from the logistics of guaranteeing supplies to one which viewed Gazprom as a possible tool of the Russian state’s ambitions in Europe. What Juncker gave it through his Energy Union programme was the bureaucratic and budgetary means to pursue that agenda with more confidence. The Commission then sought to expand its powers in ways which enabled it to interfere with Member States’ energy-related contracts with Russia prior to them signing.

“In January 2016, the European Commission sought more authority for itself and energy regulators to ensure security of supply. It leaked drafts of an energy security package, the Commission sought to review ex-ante, intergovernmental agreements; this would specifically target Russian and mainly Eastern member states.” (Energy Union, p.152).

This was done in the aftermath of the renewal of the initial EU sanctions on Russia following the annexation of Crimea. Those initial sanctions did not directly include imports of oil or gas because of Europe’s heavy dependence on such imports.

However, the Commission had long viewed its responsibilities to include the systematic reduction of that dependence. By inserting itself between the Member States and Russia in the areas of energy contracts the Commission hoped to use its legal powers in ways that created outcomes which fitted that responsibility.

From years earlier Russia was being depicted as a threat to EU interests on the basis of it being a major supplier of natural gas to Europe. That perceived threat was sustained by the European Commission even though Russian supplies of gas actually benefited the economies of Europe. It was a threat that was crafted around the idea that at some point Russia would use Europe’s dependency on its gas in order to gain political and/or commercial advantages over European businesses. The 2006 and 2009 brief suspensions of Russian gas supplies traversing Ukraine was provided as the main evidence of what Russia was capable of. The actual circumstances and context of those suspensions were deliberately distorted or ignored (see earlier article on this subject in Labour Affairs) in order to sustain the perception of Russia as an arch-villain determined on maintaining Europe in a state of vassalage.

The company which supplied this Russian gas to Europe was Gazprom and, given the way the European Commission depicted the gas supply as a potential weapon in the hands of the Russian state, the Commission was incapable of perceiving Gazprom in purely commercial terms. However, within such commercial terms it could, and did, use its regulatory tools in increasingly imaginative ways in order to impair and discourage the commercial operations of Gazprom. Also, when it came to the framing of its Third Energy Package of 2009 the Commission included what came to be known as the “Gazprom Clause” which effectively gave national regulators the option to disbar contracts with Gazprom not necessarily on commercial lines but out of ‘energy security’ concerns.

The most blatant example of the Commission’s use of its regulatory powers occurred on 27 September 2011 when the Commission used its anti-trust powers to launch dawn raids against the offices of Gazprom and affiliated companies across ten EU countries. That event constituted the largest anti-trust operation in the history of the EU. The following year, on 12 September 2012, the Commission opened a formal case against Gazprom and in 2015 it finally produced a written statement of its case. That statement alleged that some of Gazprom’s business practices in the “Central and Eastern European gas supply segment of the EU’s Single Market” constituted an abuse of its dominant market position in breach of EU anti-trust rules. The eight EU countries which were deemed to be the victims of this abuse were Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia.

“On the basis of its initial investigation, the Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom is breaking EU anti-trust rules by pursuing an overall strategy to partition Central and Eastern European gas markets with the aim of maintaining an unfair pricing policy in several of those Member States.

Gazprom implements this strategy by: (i) hindering cross-border gas sales, (ii) charging unfair prices, and (iii) making gas supplies conditional on obtaining unrelated commitments from wholesalers concerning gas transport infrastructure.” (European Union statement, 22 April 2015).

If found guilty Gazprom was facing a fine of more than EUR 10 billion. It took the Commission a further three years to make its ruling. Such was the actual weakness of its case that when it came to the ruling, instead of fining Gazprom, the Commission agreed to accept a commitment by the company to modify its behaviour in certain areas. Essentially, what the Commission’s case rested upon was the claim that Gazprom was selling gas to Bulgarian and Baltic companies at a certain price but that those companies were prohibited by contract to resell that gas to other countries in the EU. The Commission contended that this deprived the customers in those countries of Russian gas at a possibly more competitive price than they were being charged as direct customers of Gazprom. However, the entire case was basically a theoretical one because, as the Commission’s own findings state:

“However, the gas markets in the Baltic States and in Bulgaria remain still very much isolated from the rest of the European Union’s gas markets. Due to the absence of gas connecting infrastructure, there is no physical possibility for wholesalers from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to transport gas to the Baltic States or Bulgaria, or the other way round, leaving the latter markets isolated from the rest of the European Union’s gas markets.

This physical infrastructure isolation would remain irrespective of the Commitment to remove all contractual territorial restrictions or equivalent measures having an equivalent effect.” (European Commission, Case AT.39816

– Upstream gas supplies in Central and Eastern Europe. Commission Decision of 24 May 2018, p.33).

In other words, the Commission’s case that Gazprom’s insistence in its contracts with these countries prohibited the onward sale of the delivered gas to other European countries was academic because those countries did not have the infrastructure to re- export the delivered gas in the first place.

As a result the Commission was not justified in imposing a fine on Gazprom. Instead it saved face by agreeing to a binding arrangement that ensured Gazprom would modify future contracts to take account of the objections of the Commission. On that understanding the Commission closed its proceedings in the case on 24 May 2018.

This belated reticence on the part of the Commission to pursue the case was not unrelated to the fact that with Merkel Chancellor of Germany and with Germany Gazprom’s biggest European customer, it was deemed to be impractical to push Gazprom too hard at that time.

The effect of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

In 2017, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and before Russia’s Special Military Operation of February 2022, the Head of the Energy Programme at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and an avid critic of Russia wrote:

“For the first time in the history of the [European] Union, it became possible to conjure up a reasonably credible image of an external enemy against whom to unite . . . without Gazprom and Russia, the Union might be in an even worse state that it currently is.” (“Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Gazprom encounters EU regulation”, by Indra Overland. In Energy Union: Europe’s New Liberal Mercantilism?, edited by Svein S. Andersen, Andreas Goldthau and Nick Sitter. Published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017, p.126).

Of course this “reasonably credible image” was something that the actions of the European Commission helped to conjure up.

The same expert in the role of energy in geopolitics was able to offer a different perspective on the behaviour or Russia towards Ukraine only to dismiss it.

“While Russia was widely seen as using natural gas as an economic means to reach the political end of keeping Ukraine in its orbit, one could also argue the opposite. Russia had for many years been politically motivated to provide Ukraine with subsidised gas and to bear with Ukraine’s repeated failure to pay or account for gas, but when Ukraine moved away from Russia, this political interest became unrealistic and the Russians shifted to a more clear cut commercial rationale in which there was no mercy towards the debtor.” (Ibid.).

But this more accurate account of what actually happened in 2006 and 2009 was never considered by the European Commission as it didn’t fit with its efforts to depict Russia as an unreliable supplier of energy and was not conducive to the one which sustained its influence over the European Union.

The result was that when the events of February 2022 happened the European Commission was already in a position where its influence over the EU could only dramatically increase. By this time the President of the European Commission was Ursula von Der Leyen. She had succeeded Juncker in December 2019 having previously been Germany’s Minister of Defence. One of her first actions as President of the Commission was to set out her ideas for how the Commission was to evolve over the following five years. Those ideas were based on the Commission becoming a “geopolitical commission”.

By this she meant that her presidency would be used to move what was seen as the “political” emphasis of the Juncker period with its concentration on internal issues, to the creation of a Commission which pursued a greater emphasises on “geopolitical” politics. While this continued to include climate change it also meant strengthening the EU’s role in global politics particularly in the areas of defence, security, and economic diplomacy. In terms of defence she wished to see a closer cooperation with NATO as well as developing the EU’s own defence capability.

The Covid pandemic more or less overshadowed her first period as President of the European Commission and this to some extent hindered her capacity to create her “geopolitical commission”. However, it did offer the opportunity for the Commission to expand its independence within the EU bureaucracy while at the same time it enabled the Commission to become further integrated into the western global political infrastructure.

Her “geopolitical commission” really came into its own after the Russian Special Military Operation at the end of February 2022. On 9 May 2022 she stated that the European Union needed to move away from unanimous voting in the Council when it comes to foreign policy decision and in the following month she re-emphasised this position claiming that the unanimous voting requirement was hindering the applications of sanctions on Belarus and Russia. In May of that year she also announced that the European Union was placing a ban all imports of Russian crude oil and petroleum. And in November she announced that the Commission would work to establish an International Criminal Court to try the Russian Federation for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. For the duration of her first presidency she travelled widely espousing the cause of Ukraine and referring to the country as being “part of the European family”.

After she was re-elected President of the Commission in July 2024 she ensured that the balance of her new Commission would provide greater influence to the incorrigibly anti-Russian Baltic countries. She allocated the most important positions of what in effect was the Foreign Minister of the Commission, to the former Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas (she was also a Vice President of the Commission) and the Defence and Space portfolio to the former Prime Minister of Lithuania, Andrius Kubilius.

The official title of Kaja Kallas is High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and her responsibility is to implement the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. This policy represents the agreed position among the Member States in the fields of defence diplomacy and actions. Decisions taken under this policy require unanimity among the Member States but aspects of those decisions can be further interpreted by a qualified majority. The policy was amended over time through the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties but one of the most significant developments impacting the policy was the adoption by the EU, on 21 March 2022, of the “Strategic Compass for Security and Defence”. This marked

“A turning point for the European Union as a security provider. The Strategic Compass constitutes the EU’s new political blueprint for a more responsive and prepared Common Foreign and Security Policy over the next decade.

Despite its non-legal binding nature, it has the fundamental ambition of building a bridge between the Common Foreign and Security Policy, as imbued in Title V of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and the new geopolitical reality characterised by the return of high-conventional warfare to Europe, a shift towards power politics over rules, and growing security uncertainty. In this vein, the Strategic Compass functions as a ‘guide to action’, rather than a simplistic EU vision of the world, aiming to equip the EU with ‘the language of power’ and translating the ‘Geopolitical Commission’ manifesto, crafted by European Commission President Ursula von Der Leyen, into tangible actions.” (How the war in Ukraine has transformed the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, by Davide Genini. Published in Yearbook of European Law, 11 April 2025).

[Note: Title V of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union referred to here is named “Area of Freedom, Security and Justice” and it covers the topics indicated in the name. The treaty was one of the two treaties that formed the constitutional basis of the European Union (the other being the Treaty of the European Union) and has been amended several times since. The version referred to here is the one which was adopted by the European Council in March 2011 and came into effect in October 2012.]

This has enabled the Commission to expand the grey areas of its responsibilities which exist between the decisions of the Council of the EU and the way in which those decisions are implemented. The latest annual report of the Diplomatic Service of the European Union (which is under the authority of Kaja Kallas but at the time was under her predecessor, Josep Borrell) was published under the heading “2024 Progress Report on the Implementation of the Strategic Compass for Security and Defence”. The initial part of the report states:

“Since its adoption in March 2022, we have swiftly implemented many of the goals set in the Strategic Compass. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has instilled further urgency into our efforts to make the EU a stronger and more credible security and defence actor. Our response to this military aggression has been united and unprecedented from the start, rapidly putting the Compass into motion and mobilising tools foreseen across its four pillars. This included the provision of lethal and non-lethal equipment as well as the training of more than 40,000 Ukrainian military and capacity building of Ukrainian armed forces. With our new training target of 60,000 by the summer the EU will be the largest provider of military training to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Our resolve and commitment to support Ukraine for as long as it takes remains unabated.

“We have developed stronger and more adaptable crisis management tools and response, both civilian and military. With our recently launched EU maritime operation ASPIDES, we provide a concrete and decisive answer to the growing threat against maritime security in the Red Sea and the Gulf region. Our Security and Defence Initiative in the Gulf of Guinea launched at the end of 2023 addresses security challenges and spill over of instability from the Sahel. Earlier in 2023, we also launched missions in Armenia, in the context of the deteriorating security situation at the border with Azerbaijan, and in the Republic of Moldova to strengthen their resilience to hybrid threats. We have also successfully reached the strategic objective for the EU Training Mission in Mozambique through the training of eleven companies. In parallel, we continue supporting our partners in Africa and elsewhere through the provision of equipment, training, and mentoring. We see a growing need to answer quickly to crises. Having the EU Rapid Deployment Capacity fully operational by 2025 is still one of our main priorities. The first ever EU Live Exercise held in October 2023 in Spain contributed to improve military cooperation on the ground between Member States. More exercises are planned for the next years.” (Progress Report on the Implementation of the Strategic Compass for Security and Defence, 18 March 2024).

The full report can be seen at:  implementation-strategic-compass-security-and-defence_en

This is the latest report that I could find and it shows the kind of areas that the European Commission is now intimately involved with and its growing external reach. In many ways that external reach is being mirrored in the manner in which the Commission has expanded its powers over the internal workings of the EU as exemplified by the decision it has taken earlier in this month to ban all member countries from entering into commercial agreements involving Russian gas after next year and which was highlighted at the beginning of this article.

How much further the Commission goes in expanding its powers will depend on whether the Member States continue to concede ground to it in a situation where the posturing of Ursula von den Leyen and the belligerency of Kaja Kallas are leading the EU onto ever more dangerous ground when it comes to a war with Russia.